The new acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the Biden administration was "cooking the books" on migrant arrests to the tune of "tens of thousands of cases."
Todd Lyons, named acting director by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday, told reporters Wednesday that the Biden administration misled the American people by inflating arrest stats of illegal border crossers.
"The Biden administration was cooking the books," Lyons said during a call with reporters, NewsNation reported.
Senior DHS officials called them "pass through arrests," according to the report.
"They were purposely misleading the American people by categorizing individuals processed and released into the interior of the United States as ICE arrests. A comprehensive review was done internally here with ICE, and we found tens of thousands of cases that were recorded as arrests, when, in fact, these instances were illegal aliens that were simply processed and released into the American communities," Lyons said.
Lyons was tapped by Noem to replace Caleb Vitello, who was reassigned within ICE last month amid lagging deportations.
One DHS official said that in Fiscal Year 2024, "only 29% of all ICE arrests were a result of interior enforcement," or 33,242 arrests, according to the report. In less than two months under the Trump administration, ICE has made 32,809 arrests.
"When you do the math, it shows that in just 50 days, our officers have already arrested just short of all the at large arrests made last fiscal year," the official told NewsNation, adding, "What we are doing now is actual immigration enforcement, not enforcement theater."